1930s-style fanfiction novelet sequel to the original 1929-text The Mystery of Cabin Island, everybody's favorite Hardy Boys winter adventure. More ice-boating on the bay, more mysterious happenings on Cabin Island, an unexpected thrilling ride to...
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**The first three Hardy Boys books in the original series - The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, The Secret of the Old Mill - came out in 1927, almost a hundred years ago now. The copies of those titles still on sale today are revisions of the original stories and still as popular as ever, even though hundreds of other titles have been published in newer Hardy Boys series. I grew up reading the original books from the 20th century from a vast collection I got from an uncle, and I still prefer them to this day. The following novelet is a sequel to the original 1929-text version of The Mystery of Cabin Island, and it is written in that old-fashioned style from when YA books were far more literary than they are today, but still every bit as exciting.**
Late December, 1929 Bayport, USA
The long cold snap that had begun before the Christmas holiday showed no signs of coming to an end, and the young people of Bayport were determined to make the best of every minute of it. The cold clear day in the week between Christmas and New Year Day found them in groups of dozens and scores on the frozen surface of Barmet Bay, surrounded by the snow-blanketed hills to the west and the black water far away to the east beyond the bay where King Frost had lost his ice-bound battle with the Atlantic.
The colorfully clad figures of ice skaters glided and spun in the numerous coves along the shoreline. Farther out beyond them, ice-boats raced in the wind with billowing sails on the open reaches of the bay, looking like a frenetic flight of whirling wheeling gulls.
Frank Hardy, a dark handsome boy of sixteen, a scarf carelessly wrapped around his neck atop a thick red sweater, sped backwards over the ice on one of the smooth little natural rinks that lined the rugged shoreline.
"Be careful! I wouldn't chance it if I were you," warned his brother Joe, a fair curly-haired boy who was a year Frank's junior. "You can hurt yourself trying to do a back flip."
"He's darn tootin' right," agreed their plump good-natured friend Chet Morton. The brows on his round wind-burned face were furrowed in concern. "If you misjudge your moves, Frank, you could bang your head on the ice."
But Frank Hardy only cast them an amused glance as he gathered speed, looking back over his shoulder.
"Oh, be careful," pleaded Callie Shaw, a pretty brown-haired girl who was Frank's particular favorite among the girls at Bayport High. She wrung her hands worriedly in their pretty knitted mittens.
"Right, Frank, you could really get injured," agreed Iola Morton in anxious tones. She was Chet's sister, cute and pleasantly plump, and she was more than reluctantly admired by the bashful Joe.
Frank chuckled as he whisked backward through the frosty air. "Don't be such fussbudgets! I've practiced this a thousand times."
Joe sniffed indignantly. "Sure he did. All last summer while he was sitting in an easy chair at home, imagining doing it."
